A strange afternoon & evening, started by a funeral and wake. I eventually get to the Searchers gig in Wimborne with radio friend Geneen, they are in their usual fine form, with their audience all being up for a good time.

After dropping Geneen off head over to the Cellar Bar where Bird Jaguar are doing their blues rock thing. The music is great, all four of them sing on occasion, they tell us they are piloting a new song Lightning tonight, bit of 6/8 ballad, which seems to annoy some of their regulars who are just up for big loud and frantic tunes. Being a little slower it gives greater chance for musicianship to shine through, always a good thing. Overall, many of their tunes are of this decent slower nature, which makes me wonder why there is the call for some more up tempo music. Its good stuff.

Unusually for a Sunday night I’m with my friend from HopeFM Geneen (Principle Personalities), taking her to this Charlie Landsborough concert at the Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne.

The place is about 80% capacity, talking around some have travelled a long way from further SouthWest for this experience. The empty stage is hung with elegant drapes backlit with blue initially (the lighting changes colour through the show)

The intro backing music starts; the band walk on one at a time and join in, guitar, organ keyboard, pedal steel, bass guitar, piano keyboard, and finally Charlie himself. They go straight into two numbers, then he’s into a couple of anecdotes and funny stories, very entertaining.

The openers have been Country style, the third folk ballad shows what an amazing voice he has, he’s clearly kept it in good order for the 16 or so years he’s been gigging (despite playing for much of his life, he only got “noticed” in the ’90’s when in his fifties).

From then on each song is interspersed with Birkenhead and scouse jokes and stories, and reasons behind the songs, much in “an audience with” style. He’s very engaging, and generous with his time. There’s a large contingent from Bluebird Silver Dollar counry music club here too, very vocal when mentions and thanks them for being his only audience for the early times.

His latest album is love songs he’s covered, he chooses one tonight – Billy Joel’s Just The Way You Are – to dedicate by name to a number of people who’ve written to him prior to the concert.

He also shares a bit about his life as a Christian, before moving into a couple of Gospel oriented songs, still within the country theme.

Halfway through the second half the band depart and Charlie covers an Irish ballad just on his acoustic guitar. He has a gizmo on the side of his stool that acts as volume and tone contol by the sound of it, however to me the best thing is the clever use of simple lighting against the white sheet backdrops. During the song they are painted rich emerald green to match the subject, with the green changing to white and orange in the middle and right to turn them into a depiction of the Irish flag at the close. Very stylistic.

As usual with Geneen we go backstage to meet Charlie and his wife Thelma for ten minutes, they are a very humble and pleasurable couple to hang about with. Geneen has had wonderful feedback from listeners about the show he did for her, which she shares with him, we also have the obligatory photos courtesy of Geneen’s camera (will post here once available). All in all another great night out!

A mixed bag tonight, timeless 60’s & 70’s then bang up to date, hence the reference to the extremes in the title, since I’m talking about The Searchers in Wimborne followed by The Sarah Griffin Band in Boscombe.

Chatting to Frank in the green room he’s politely familiar and down to earth, without any of the pretensions that certain stars in his position can too easily adopt. For example, Frank admits he’s struggling to get back into the swing of touring after the Christmas break! Most of his focus is on the upcoming tour of Australia, since it’s something the band really look forward to each time they go.

None of your jaded faded rock star here – he’s genuinely interested in his fans; Geneen has interviewed Frank many times for her Principle Personalties show to publicise their gigs locally, although I think this is the first time they’ve managed to just chat together…

We leave Frank to his preparations for the show and so on into the concert. The Searchers put on a good spectacle, with a grand entrance then straight into a string of their hits across the time they’ve been playing. There are a number of humourous interruptions since this is a band that really encourage the audience and their participation – lots of singalong, barracking & heckling – all enthusiastically led on by the chaps.

The hit songs are punched out in mini-sets of 3’s and 4’s, then with a lot of banter between batches. Frank is an excellent front man (Spencer being the lead singer), with some great anecdotes mixed in with what I imagine must be stock phrases :-

“Flash photography is strictly …
[Pause]
… permitted.
– we don’t attract paparazzi so you’re the only chance we’ve got of getting into the papers”.

The humour continues in similar self-deprecating vein. I struggle to describe and express the enjoyable time they give us on stage between minisets. Lots of backtalk and comic comments particularly between Frank and John, John as the “old man” of the group since Frank joined 46 years ago, after they’d been going a year. Spencer is predominantly left as the front man for the tunes – he has an amazing voice, able to pull off Roy Orbison and Del Shannon tributes in addition to their own material. Slightly surprisingly to me, Scott (drummer) is not really mentioned in the banter, yet he’s totally there making the foundation for the band – he’s joined within the past year, and appparently is the reason some other songs have been dusted off from the back catalogue.

As I’ve previously intimated, I was captivated by Sarah’s new sound at the beginning of 2010, having heard her perform as a capable yet not-much-special acoustic singer songwriter from 2007. Indeed, the debut album was one of my first picks for the Listed column I write.

All the way through the gig the songs sound strong, going down really well with the eclectic mix of people jumping around. Having said that, it’s clearly the pacier tracks that this crowd desire, although all those played are crowd-pleasers in my opinion – it does help that I’ve become an ardent fan in the past year.

Some new songs get their first outing tonight as well, while they’re not quite as strong as the well gigged album songs, they don’t dis-satisfy either, which hopefully means they’ll be left in the set list to grow their gig life. E.g. Shot To Pieces features the usual wonderful harmonies between Sarah and backing singer Carolyn.

Again, I struggle to find words to explain the repeat encores (literally – the band repeat some of their “happy songs” for their encores). To sum up, another great Saturday night of ace music in the area, even given the amazing difference in timeline extremes.